Just country livin'

One of the best things about living in the country is being able to use the phrase, "well, that's country livin." It's kind of an all-encompassing excuse for when things don't look:

 1) clean, 
2) tidy,
and even 
3) sanitary


Example: The floor is dirty?  Just country livin'. There's chicken poop on the back patio? Just country livin'. Starting to get the hang of it?

When your clean glasses have strange residue in their bottoms , it's the hard well water. Country livin'. When there are small sticks or pieces of grass between the sheets, it's because hay really does get everywhere once you break the bale. Definitely country livin'. If there's an odd smell in the house that indicates country livin', most folks will immediately check bottom of their shoes for animal feces and then their sweaty farming clothes stuffed in the clothes hamper.  And after awhile they learn...when others don't like the smells, sights or sounds around their place, they offer the reason: It's just country livin'.

And of course once you've become fluent at offering this as the reason anything happens, you then can move onto more far-fetched, yet still in the realm of possibility scenarios that can also be blamed on country life:

Dead animal on your property
Dead person on your property
Unidentifiable body part on your property
Sunburn
Welding burn
Indian burn
Bits of canning vegetables stuck to the kitchen wall
Bits of canning vegetables stuck to the kitchen ceiling
Bits of canning vegetables that somehow made it into the dining room
gardening by moonlight
zip lining by moonlight
fixing fence by moonlight
getting old
feeling young
sunburn
windburn
mortgage burn
muscle aches
muscle building
euphoria
defeat
plantar fasciitis
back pain (always)
freckles
tan arms
white belly
general insanity
specific happiness

All of the above.....Just country livin'.

(If you live in the city, never fear. In your case, just feel free to make your own list and add the excuse, "well that's life in the big city." This rationale works well for all those city-oriented things you know and love, like meat-hurling street performers, homeless encampments under your parking garage and 2 a.m. restaurant runs to the Thai place 'round the corner. I lived that life,too. Not better, not worse, just different.)